Sunday, January 22, 2012

3 in 1: My answer to questions about the Bible's compilation and being changed over time

This post is an answer to a few similar questions that I am frequently asked:
  1. "How can I believe in the Bible when it has been changed over time?"
  2. "How do you know what Jesus actually taught when (insert name of King here) chose what he thought should be in the Bible and what should be scrapped?"
  3. "Aren't there bits of the Bible missing because some king put different writings together to make the Bible, leaving some out?"

For anyone who is asking these questions, or similar questions, here's your answer. Firstly, I find it's Catholics (or those raised Catholic) that ask me the 2nd and 3rd questions in the above list the most. I have never attended Mass, nor have I been to Catholic school, but the fact that so many Catholic friends of mine have this strange belief, leads me to think that perhaps Catholics are taught that some man/king/Pope or whoever compiled the Bible. Or perhaps Catholics are not taught this, but it's a conspiracy among the less observant/strict believers.

The first question I get asked a lot by Muslims. Many of them think the Bible has been changed in terms of things being added, things being removed and things being re-written, in terms of the language used, to say something different.

I'm answering these 3 questions at once because they all link in together. (Except for the semantic issue of the language used in the Bible when translated, which will be a separate post). The fact is the Bible was actually compiled by the writers of the Bible themselves, who were divinely called to write the scriptures. They knew their calling, wrote the scriptures and those scriptures were then brought together to form the Bible as a whole. (For a more in-depth look at who put the Bible together, click here). Thus, it was not a person putting things in and taking things out to suit their needs. Nor has anything been added since, left out or removed.

We know that everything in the Bible now has always been part of the Bible, as God intended. It is not missing anything. God was the one in charge of putting the Bible together. It is the sceptics and unbelievers who try to portray this message of the Bible being incorrect in one of these ways. Speaking about the apostle Paul, Peter says:

2 Peter 3:16 - He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.


There's also a great, short video from WretchedRadio touching on this topic:

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